Neither the effective KR Code of Criminal Procedure nor any other regulations have clear provision specifying the period of time within which a suspected person, on whom charges were served and for whom detention was chosen as a measure of restraint, shall be transferred to the pre-trial detention facility. According to the note to Art. 9 of the Law on the Procedure of the Detention, defendants may be transferred to TDFs when it is necessary for the purposes of investigation, trial outside residential areas where pre-trial detention facilities are located from which it is not possible to bring these persons on a daily basis, and for the period needed for the aforesaid activities and a judicial process, but for no longer than ten days a month. However, in spite of this rule, detained persons are held in TDFs for a longer period of time as instructed by representatives of investigation agencies or court. The Head of a TDF as an official of the executive branch has no right to refuse to respond to their request for convoy and holding the arrested in a TDF. The objective of investigation agencies and court is to investigate a crime and hold a hearing within the time period specified by law. But because of no possibility for a systematic convoy (guarded escort) of untried prisoners and defendants from pre-trial detention facilities for the purposes of investigations or participation in court hearings due to remote location and lack of funds for the escort, they are held in TDFs according to the crime scene for the convenience of performing the above mentioned procedural activities. Explanations by the detainees helped determine their total detention period including the time they were held in TDFs. Diagram 25. Duration of detention of interviewed persons in TDFs The question that has to be answered is who should have more responsibility for holding arrested persons in TDFs – an investigator or a judge, who is limited by procedural time frames and who made a decision to hold the defendant in a TDF, or the head of the TDF who exceeded a ten-day detention period specified by Art. 9 of the Law on the Procedure of the Detention. International Standard 5.1.6. RIGHT TO DEFENSE The UN Human Rights Committee in its Concluding Observations pointed out that all persons who are arrested must immediately have access to counsel.198 According to the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, all persons are entitled to call upon the assistance of a lawyer of their choice to protect and establish their rights and to defend them in all stages of criminal proceedings. All arrested persons are immediately informed by the competent authority of their right to be assisted by a lawyer. Any such persons who do not have a lawyer shall, in all cases in which the interests of justice so require, be entitled to have a lawyer of experience and competence commensurate with the nature of the offence assigned to them by a judicial or other body in order to provide effective legal assistance, without payment by them if they lack sufficient means to pay for such services. 199 198 199 Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee: Georgia. 01.05.1997. CCPR/C/79/Add.74. 9 April 1997, par. 28. UN Basic Principles, principle 17. 70